Southampton vs Sunderland: A Punch-Up on England’s South Coast That the Whole World Pretends Not to Watch By the time the tannoy at St Mary’s crackles through its final, half-hearted rendition of “Oh When the Saints,” UN monitors in Geneva will already have logged the affair as “low-intensity sporting conflict, minimal collateral damage.” Everywhere else,…
Fred Dibnah, Steeplejack of Empire and Last Man to Hear the World Before It Got Too Loud By Our Man in Bolton-by-Satellite Bolton, England – The planet’s remaining chimneys are now Instagram backdrops for artisanal coffee or luxury flats, but there once lived a man who climbed them for sport, stripped them brick by brick,…
Rome, Saturday 22:30 CEST – Somewhere between the 18th green and the 19th hole, the Ryder Cup is doing what NATO summits, G7 communiqués and Davos panels only dream of: forcing sworn adversaries to sit in the same golf cart and pretend they like each other. Every two years, the United States and Europe pause…
The Super-Subcontinent Derby: How India vs Bangladesh Quietly Became the World’s Most Watched Proxy War by Our Man with a Visa Stamp and a Liver to Match When 1.7 billion people glance at their phones this evening, roughly the same number who claim they’ve “read the terms and conditions,” they will discover that a patch…
Across six continents, three oceans, and whatever the Black Sea is feeling these days, the word “Colbert” now functions as a Rorschach test for the modern psyche. Say it in Paris and you’ll get a disquisition on the Sun King’s finance minister, that joyless accountant who believed trade balances were moral report cards. Whisper it…
So, Delaware football—yes, the very phrase makes hardened geopolitical analysts choke on their espresso. A state you can cross in the time it takes to mispronounce “Kyiv” has decided to play American football, that padded ballet of imperial overreach. Yet here we are, in 2024, watching the Delaware Fightin’ Blue Hens peck at destiny while…
Dabo Swinney: The Last American Tribal Chieftain the Rest of the World Never Asked for By Matteo “Mick” Rizzo, Foreign Correspondent-at-Large ATLANTA—From the glass boxes of Davos to the sweaty favelas of Rio, the planet is currently transfixed by only three things: whether TikTok will outlive the dollar, which hemisphere will first burst into literal…
Bradford City vs Huddersfield: Two Post-Industrial Towns Try to Feel Something Again —————————————————————– The world’s attention, when not glued to thermobaric TikToks or the latest Central Banker Panic Index, occasionally drifts toward West Yorkshire—where Bradford City and Huddersfield Town renew a rivalry so old it predates both Brexit and coherent Brexit planning. On Saturday these…
Aussie Boots, American Dreams, and the Quiet Art of Globalized Punts By Our Man in the Cheap Seats, somewhere over the International Date Line SYDNEY — Somewhere near the 33rd parallel, where the Tasman Sea kisses the Pacific and time zones politely ignore each other, a 31-year-old Perth carpenter turned San Francisco 49ers punter is…
THE BALLAD OF MAX KEPLER, OR HOW A BERLIN-BORN OUTFIELDER BECAME A ONE-MAN GLOBALIZATION SATIRE Somewhere between the Brandenburg Gate and the Metrodome’s ghost, Max Kepler-Różycki was born with a passport thick enough to stop small-arms fire. His mother, a professional ballet dancer from Poland; his father, a touring stage actor from Germany—parents whose combined…
Canterbury, England — Travel east from London until the smog thins and the sheep begin to outnumber the Deliveroo riders and you’ll find the University of Kent, a campus whose red-brick brutalism looks suspiciously like the Ministry of Truth on a spa weekend. Founded in 1965—roughly the same moment the world decided napalm and miniskirts…
Sal Stewart: The Accidental Globalist Who Conquered Baseball by Refusing to Leave His Couch Somewhere between the 37th parallel and the cold glow of a laptop screen, Sal Stewart became the planet’s most improbable export: a 21-year-old Cincinnati Reds farmhand whose swing now travels farther than most passports. While diplomats argue over trade routes and…
